Ranking the top 10 head coach/quarterback combinations in college football for 2024

There is no question about what position is the most important in college football. 20 of the 24 Heisman Trophy winners this century have played the same position; quarterback. While even the very best quarterbacks in the college game won’t be around for much longer than two or three years, unlike the seemingly two-decade-long careers of NFL franchise QBs, the QB is the second most important person in the entire program. Second, of course, to the head coach. 

In many ways, that duo of coach and quarterback ultimately determines the fate of the season in college football. Even for teams with elite defensive teams or those with excellent wide receivers and running backs, eventually, the fate of the season sits on the shoulders of the quarterback, and he needs to be up to the task. 

Over the past three years, Stetson Bennett and JJ McCarthy have proved that you don’t need to be a Heisman Trophy contender to win in the College Football Playoff, particularly when you have a head coach like Kirby Smart or Jim Harbaugh. 

With so much turnover in the coaching ranks, Jim Harbaugh leaving for the NFL and Nick Saban retiring, and even more amongst the top passers in the game, with Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels, Drake Maye, Michael Penix Jr. and Bo Nix all going in the first round of the NFL draft, let’s recalibrate for the 2024 regular season with the top 10 coach/quarterback combinations.  

Really, other than big offseason splashes with never-before-seen transfer portal activity and unprecedented roster churn, Coach Prime hasn’t done much to bathe himself in glory as an FBS head coach. 

After a 3-0 start, Colorado fell apart, finishing 4-8 with the lone win down the stretch coming against Arizona State. Amidst the collapse, Sanders even made a significant change at offensive coordinator, transferring play-calling duties from Sean Lewis to Pat Shurmur. Yet, through it all, Shedeur Sanders played like a star. 

Shedeur was thrown into an unwinnable situation, with overwhelming hype and nowhere near enough talent around him to live up to it. Yet, despite being pressured on a staggering 37% of his dropbacks and sacked 49 times, he threw for 3,229 yards and 27 touchdowns with just three interceptions. 

On the dropbacks when he was actually kept clean, Sanders completed 76.5% of his passes, the fourth best in the country, and averaged 7.8 yards per attempt with 18 touchdowns and no interceptions. 

If Shedeur has the offensive line to keep him upright, and more importantly the confidence in that group to sit in the pocket, then Colorado will take a significant step forward and Shedeur like his father, will be a first-round pick in the NFL draft. 

After just one season with the former five-star quarterback, Ryan Day was ready to get out of the Kyle McCord business. McCord is an upgrade for Syracuse, but at Ohio State, he wasn’t getting it done. So, as Avery Johnson ascended to take the starting job at Kansas State, Will Howard headed to Columbus for a chance to play for a national title. 

Day’s roster is the best in the country and the Buckeyes are one of the favorites to win it all, but Howard isn’t the No. 1 reason why. Surrounded by excellent talent, Howard will need to be, well, better than Kyle McCord was to get the job done in Columbus. 

Howard only completed 60.9% of his passes and averaged 7.3 yards per attempt with 24 touchdowns to 10 interceptions, while McCord finished the year at a 65.8% completion rate, averaging 9.1 yards per attempt with 24 TDs to six picks. While those numbers sound staggeringly similar and even favor McCord, there is one distinct area where Howard will raise the ceiling of this Buckeye offense under new offensive coordinator Chip Kelly.

Howard brings a serviceable, though not particularly dynamic, element with his legs, running for 351 yards and nine touchdowns last season. Nearly 100% of that production came on designed runs and the threat of the quarterback run alone will improve Ohio State’s red zone efficiency, even if Howard doesn’t provide anything as a scrambler.

It took a few years for Mike Norvell to establish himself at Florida State after leaving Memphis to take the job in 2020. He went a meager 8-13 over his first two years as the head coach of the Seminoles, but after 10 wins in 2022, Norvell leveraged the transfer portal to construct one of the best roster in the country and guide it to an undefeated season. 

However, it was an injury to his quarterback, Jordan Travis, that kept the Seminoles out of the College Football Playoff. Now, with Travis’s career over, it’s no surprise that Norvell went back into the portal to land DJ Uiagalelei who reestablished his career in Oregon State last season after he was unable to fill Trevor Lawrence’s shoes at Clemson. 

Uiagalelei will never be a precision passer, he only completed 57% of his passes for the Beavers last season, but with his imposing size at 6-foot-4 252 pounds, he holds up well under pressure, getting sacked on just 8.7% of his pressured dropbacks and he posted a rushing EPA of 15.6 which was 25th best among quarterbacks last season, though only rushing for 219 yards and six touchdowns. 

A former offensive coordinator, Norvell, along with his current OC Alex Atkins, needs to develop an offense that plays to their veteran quarterback’s strengths as a downfield passer out of play-action and limit the turnovers that plagued him at Clemson. If he can do that, Florida State will be back in the College Football Playoff conversation and won’t have to worry about being left out of the four-team CFP. 

Lance Leipold is the ultimate overachiever in college football, and that could soon land him a big-time coaching job. For now, though, he’s looking to lead Kansas to a Big 12 title and his best chance to do it will be with a healthy Jalon Daniels. 

Daniels has struggled with injuries throughout his career and only played three games last year and has yet to play more than nine in a single season. Though when healthy, Daniels has been excellent. In 2022, his third season at Kansas, Daniels led the Jayhawks to a 5-0 start before nagging injuries limited him throughout the rest of the year and Kansas finished 6-7. 

The 6-foot 200-pound senior has elite dual-threat ability. In 2022, he threw for 2,014 yards while completing over 60% of his throws with 18 touchdowns to four interceptions, and on the ground, he ran for 425 yards and seven scores. 

Health is the biggest question for Daniels and Kansas, but Leipold will be facing a unique challenge in his coaching career, his first season without offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki. Kotelnicki moved on to Penn State, taking the same job for the Nittany Lions. 

Lincoln Riley went to the Pac-12 to escape a potential move to the SEC, yet Kyle Whittingham proved to be a considerable thorn in his side out west. In 2022, Utah foiled USC’s chance to make the College Football Playoff, handing the Trojans their only regular season loss and knocking them off in the Pac-12 Championship Game again. 

Whittingham is entering his 21st season as the head coach of the Utah Utes and it feels like Cam Rising has been in college for half of them. Rising missed all of last season with a knee injury he suffered in the 2023 Rose Bowl, but he’s returning for Week 1 this year with Utah in the Big 12 where he began his collegiate career with Texas in 2018. 

Despite his remarkably long career, Rising has only been Whittingham’s starting QB for two seasons, in 2021 and 2022. In 2022, Rising threw for 3,034 yards and 26 touchdowns with eight interceptions. 

Rising is a big-game performer. His best career performance came against Riley’s Trojans when USC was No. 7 in the country. He threw for 415 yards with 30 completions on 44 attempts with two touchdowns plus 60 yards and three scores on the ground. Rising’s toughness is one of his greatest strengths, which makes him a perfect on-field embodiment of Whittingham’s attitude, but it could also make it tough for him to stay healthy throughout his final year of college football. 

It’s been quite a rollercoaster ride for Lane Kiffin to find a home in Oxford, but the entire way, nobody has denied his ability as an offensive play-caller. Last season, Kiffin led Ole Miss to its first 11-win season in program history and though his team came up short in matchups against Georgia and Alabama, the Rebels dominated Penn State in the Peach Bowl with a 38-25 win behind Jaxson Dart’s excellent performance. 

Dart burst onto the scene as a freshman at USC with crazy eyeblack a gunslinger mentality. However, over the past two seasons, Dart has settled in with Kiffin as his play-caller and has become one of the better quarterbacks in the conference. 

In 2022, remnants of Dart’s gunslinger past still remained and they materialized into a 12.8 average depth of target and just a 42.8% completion rate when pressured. He was only sacked on 9.6% of his pressured dropbacks, but he turned the ball over with six interceptions and held onto the ball for 3.59 seconds. Then, in 2023, his pressure-to-sack rate rose to 18.5% and his time to throw remained high on pressured dropbacks at 3.55, but his ADOT sat at 10.4, nearly identical to his 10.5 when kept clean, and he averaged 7.3 yards per attempt. 

Dart is continuing his evolution within Kiffin’s offense and to help the process, Kiffin delivered one of the best incoming transfer portal classes in the nation. With Quinshon Judkins departing for Ohio State, even more pressure falls on Dart’s shoulders, but now that he’s proven to handle pressure like a veteran quarterback, he might just take the Rebels to the College Football Playoff. 

Dan Lanning has done just about everything right since taking over the Oregon football program in 2022, his first Division I head coaching job, everything except beating Washington. The Ducks are 0-3 against Washington under Lanning’s watch and the loss as a 10-point favorite in the Pac-12 Championship Game last season kept Oregon out of the College Football Playoff. 

Still, there are plenty of reasons for optimism that the Ducks will get over the hump. First, it helps that Kalen DeBoer left for Alabama this offseason, and second, Lanning has continued to recruit as an SEC level while entering the Big Ten. Second, and potentially even more important, is Lanning and his coaching staff’s ability to work with veteran quarterbacks. 

Oregon took Bo Nix and revitalized his career after turbulent times at Auburn, turning him into a first-round NFL Draft pick. Now, Lanning’s task won’t be a reclamation project with Dillon Gabriel, it’s simply to put the sixth-year quarterback who began his career at UCF in 2019 in the best place to succeed. 

Gabriel doesn’t have the biggest arm, but he’s excellent in a spread-RPO system where he can get the ball out of his hands quickly, decisively, and accurately. At 68.9% he had the eight highest completion percentage in the country last year and his 9.5 yards per attempt was sixth best, tied with Bo Nix. 

On an Oklahoma team that struggled defensively and had its wide receiver depth tested by injuries, Gabriel was still able to throw for 3,655 yards and 30 touchdowns with just six interceptions. The limitation of his arm strength won’t be a problem in Oregon’s system and his mobility will be a big plus for the Ducks. Entering Oregon’s spread offense that allowed Nix to throw for nearly 4,500 yards last season, Gabriel is one of the Heisman Trophy favorites and for good reason. Last season, Gabriel was fourth in total expected points added at the quarterback position, only behind Jayden Daniels, Nix, and Kaidon Salter from Liberty. 

Under Steve Sarkisian, Texas finally made it back, just not all the way. The Longhorns nearly pulled off an improbable comeback against Washington in the College Football Playoff semifinal and that due in large part to the heroics of his quarterback, Quinn Ewers. 

Ewers, the former top recruit who transferred to Texas from Ohio State, returned to Austin for his junior season, his third as the starter for Sark. Ewers has unlimited arm-talent, but he’s struggled with consistency throughout his collegiate career. His pressure-to-sack ratio of 25.2% is the 26th highest among the 178 quarterbacks in the country with at least 100 dropbacks last year. 

Ewers has room to grow in terms of his decision-making, but he’s an elite thrower of the football and completed 68.5% of his passes while throwing for 3,460 yards and 22 touchdowns to just six interceptions. Sark’s offense loves to attack the intermediate part of the field and on his 105 attempts between 10-19 yards downfield last season, Ewers completed 68.6% and averaged 12.6 yards per attempt with 10 touchdowns and just two interceptions. 

Sarkisian and Ewers have fought to find a balance between the upside of Ewer’s out-of-structure play-making against the risk of negative plays. With a 2.57 second time to throw last season, Ewers appeared to recognize the efficiency of Sark’s system when it’s run on schedule and as long as he can stay healthy, which has been a struggle, the Longhorns are national championship contenders and one of the SEC favorites. 

Alabama downgraded from the greatest head coach of all-time, but the Crimson Tide only fall to No. 2 because Kalen DeBoer was a lights-out hire. Even in his final season, Saban didn’t go as far as DeBoer, who fell to Michigan in the National Championship game after the Wolverines took out Saban and Jalen Milroe. 

DeBoer proved himself to be an offensive genius at Washington, maximizing his elite-level talent with a pro-style scheme that put constant pressure on the opposing secondary. Now, he needs to adjust his play-calling to fit Jalen Milroe, who was benched after a loss to Texas in Week 1 last season but blossomed into one of the most dynamic playmakers in the country under former offensive coordinator Tommy Rees. 

After Ty Simpson struggled against USF with Milroe on the sidelines, Rees leaned into Milroe’s strengths, his legs, and the deep ball. Alabama’s offense began to leave heavily into the run game and Milroe’s average depth of target shot up to 13.4 yards, the fifth highest in the country. 

Milroe finished his season with 2,834 yards through the air and 531 on the ground with 23 passing touchdowns and 12 rushing scores. DeBoer will be without his longtime offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb who took over as the OC for the Seattle Seahawks this offseason. Still, he’s still the perfect head coach to elevate Milroe in his final collegiate season. 

The first task for DeBoer will be to find a way for Milroe to better handle pressure. He was sacked 44 times last season, the fourth most in the country and was sacked on 24.9% of his pressures. In the CFP semifinal, Michigan confounded him and his offensive line with simulated pressures and disguised blitz looks that forced him into constant trouble. He was sacked seven times, but with 63 yards on 21 carries, he still kept the Crimson Tide in that game until the final play. 

With Nick Saban out of the game, Smart has grabbed the throne as the greatest active college football head coach and the de-facto patriarch of the SEC. Dabo Swinney had the inside track for be Saban’s heir apparent atop the sport, but his refusal to adapt to the ever-changing landscape of the sport ceded poll position to Smart who won back-to-back national titles in 2021 and 2022 and is 42-2 over the past three seasons. 

For his career, Smart is 94-16 with three College Football Playoff appearances since taking over Georgia in 2016 and though Jake Fromm and Stetson Bennett quarterbacked his teams to the CFP and for Bennett to two championships, he could have the best quarterback of his tenure back to lead the team in 2024. 

In his first year as the starter, Carson Beck threw for 3,949 yards and 24 touchdowns while completing 72.2% of his throws and turning it over just six times. Beck finished last season eighth in the country in yards per attempt at 9.4 despite ranking 124th in average depth of target and within the structure of Mike Bobo’s offense, Beck was brilliant. 

On throws with play-action, Beck averaged 11.1 yards per attempt with nine touchdowns to just one interception and his 2.39 second time to throw on the season was seventh quickest in the country. Beck’s decisiveness and accuracy have him in contention for the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft. The only concern is his ability to operate outside of the boundaries of the offense. 

When pressured, Beck completed less than 50% of his passes and averaged 6.8 yards per attempt, though he managed to throw five touchdowns to no interceptions and was sacked just 12 times. Beck has a perfect environment to succeed in Athens with a quality offensive line and talented experienced receivers, what flaws exist in his game, won’t be exploited until he reaches the NFL.